The bottom line with the drive to "clean" electric is that the source of your electricity matters. Most power plants are polluting, so your electric cooktop itself may not pollute, but the source of its energy sure does. I am a huge induction fan, but this environmental argument is not viable. BTW, the same goes for electric cars- except they create tons of pollution via their batteries and short life-spans. M wrote a more thorough discussion.

I don't know about anyone else, I don't have my ring doorbell inside my house, in my back yard. It videos anyone coming to my door. Doesn't see the street nor my driveway (wish it did but I have a wall on the side of my entry. I wouldn't have cameras inside my house but have been thinking about cameras in my back yard. The ring camera is only triggered by movement. It goes on when someone moves within the short range of the camera. It does not go on with cars on the street or people walking on the street. Even if it did, that is public space. The Country could have cameras on the telephone poles, for all I know. Frankly there are cameras everywhere. I just paid a 'red-light ticket' my husband got by making a left on a steady red light...$158.00. He swears the turn signal was yellow. I went online and viewed the video and it was clearly red. Guilty. I guess you could call that a privacy issue? Another point. I read the article. Who is Gizmode? I never heard of them. . A simple Google search describes the website, Gizmodo as: " Gizmodo (/ɡɪzˈmoʊdoʊ/ giz-MOH-doh) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. Gizmodo also includes the subsite io9, which focuses on science fiction and futurism. " Hummm, a Science Fiction website. Interesting.... The bottom line, the camera is not inside my house recording 'whatever.' It is at your front door. It records people coming to your door. If you are involved in something shady, maybe you wouldn't want anyone to see who comes to your door. From my research, they cannot share anything with the police unless you give permission (privacy laws). I paid $100.00 for a one of the best items I ever spent money on. I like getting alerts when I'm not home, I like seeing who is ringing my doorbell. I like getting an alert when a package is left at the door. Anyone who comes to my door would be visible from my windows if I looked out. I don't see a difference between my eyes or the doorbell camera. Jane

Hello, I've been trying to track down 'Kreider' acorns -OIKOS seems to have retired this part of the business. Any chance I could get you to send me a few acorns? Happy to compensate. Thanks a lot. Ted tshab at that yahoo email with com at the end.

I was thinking this morning about how to reduce the polarization. I have no idea how to deal with the social media issue, but I think that the structure of our two party system and the electoral college contribute to polarization. I think that ranked choice voting would be a good first step. Think of a primary with 15 or 20 candidates, which we had in this election and in 2016. You tend to have a lot of candidates in the middle of the field and a few that are farther to the left of right. The middle-of-road vote gets split among a bunch of candidates, which gives the more extreme candidates an opening, even though collectively the middle-of-the-field candidates have more support. In ranked choice voting, you choose your 1st choice candidate, 2nd choice, etc. When they tally the votes, they do it in rounds. After the 1st round, they eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of 1st choice votes. The vote of anyone who listed that candidate as their first choice gets reallocated to their second choice candidate. The votes are retallied and the last place candidate is again dropped. Repeat, until you run out of rankings (I think I've only had to rank up to 5 candidates, even when the field was larger). I hesitate to use concrete examples for fear of setting off censorship. But if you are voting on 3 candidates, who we will call Left, Middle, and Right (though within a party primary, one of those would be "center), and the people who like the Left candidate put Middle as their second choice, and people who like the right candidate put Middle as their second choice, then the candidate in the middle will get the nomination. The primaries are a good place to start (especially since it is purely up to the parties). But what if we went further, and used it in the general election? And what if the Electoral College used ranked-choice voting (that would definitely take a constitutional amendment)? I think with that change you could have more than two major parties, and the ranking would push the final choice toward the middle. I think. I'm obviously ready for some serious reform.